Complex Human Systems Fail When Based on Monocultures & the Misguided Belief that Economics are Based on Natural Law and Not Created

by Fern Phan


Human made systems don't necessarily follow any kind of natural law. According to ....,  laws are, in actuality, the economic mechanisms of 13th Century monarchs. 

Although it may be subjected to the scientific method and mathematical scrutiny, it is not a natural science; it is game theory, with a set of underlying assumptions that have little to do with anything resembling genetics, neurology, evolution, or natural systems.  Edge

Preventative medicine doesn't quite go down in political and market arenas.  Van Jones resigned from the White House Council on Environmental Quality via e-mail yesterday, Sunday.  His resignation might be related to past remarks against Republicans and that he might be too radical for the mainstream. Yahoo!

He was the "greens job czar."  For him, going green meant major structural changes and not necessarily fashion choice of what he calls the eco-elite.

"What is considered green is usually for the eco-elite," he preached to the assembled solar entrepreneurs, environmental activists, and community leaders (including more than a dozen black clergymen). "But if we are actually going to meet the challenge of global warming, we are going to have to weatherize millions of homes and install millions of solar panels. That's millions of new jobs. We need to connect the people who most need the work with the work that most needs to be done." It's one of his favorite themes: the need to expand the green movement beyond "lifestyle environmentalists," with their hybrid cars and other eco-status symbols. The audience cheered. "Van Jones, he's a rock star," says Tim Rainey, director of economic development at the California Labor Federation.

Also, a mathematical model for presaging tipping points or system cascade netted physicist Kenneth Wilson won a Nobel Prize in 1982 for developing equations to describe transitions that don’t happen in a linear, easily predictable way, but are sudden and massive, such as fluids becoming turbulent and metals becoming magnetized.  

Computer models can replicate their bubble-and-crash behavior, but real markets — buffeted by political and social trends, and inevitably responding to the very act of prediction — are much cloudier.

Tip-offs for tipping points appear when the feedback loops that normally keep complex systems at equilibrium become stressed. Too many trees are cut down, too many cattle are turned out to graze, too many investors sell low. The system takes longer to recover from variations it normally weathers. Its mathematical representations become jagged rather than smooth.

“It is hard to find clear evidence of bifurcations and transitions, let alone find an early warning system to detect an upcoming crash,” said Cars Homme, an economic theorist at the University of Amsterdam.

The most promising evidence of useful early warning signs comes from grasslands, coral reefs and lakes. Vegetation-pattern-based early warning signs have been documented in several regions, and transition theory is alr Wired